Friday, March 09, 2012

Human Minds Will Live Forever (In Robot Bodies)

Do you want to live forever in a robotic body? If Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov is to be believed he already has plans that will allow humans to inhabit robots in the next ten years.

Itskov, a 31-year-old Russian media entrepreneur already claims he has already hired 30 scientists to make his dream of human immortality come true.

"This project is leading down the road to immortality," Itskov, who founded New Media Stars, a Russian company that runs several online news outlets, told Wired. "A person with a perfect Avatar will be able to remain part of society. People don't want to die."

Itskov's project "Avatar" is similar to the Pentagon's own project "Avatar" which envisions surgically transplanting human consciousness to a robot body. Itskov hopes to upload human minds without surgery leaving the human bodies empty while the human owners live on inside robots.